New games like old school Ultima Online

So I often reminisce about my old days playing Ultima Online because I believe it had the most fun collection of gameplay elements out of any game before it or since.

However, I was wondering if a game like that could ever really survive in today's lowest common denominator marketplace. I think WOW has kind of "ruined" a lot of gamers and spoiled them with features and easiness of play that you don't find in old games like UO.

For example, when you want to buy something, what do you do? You simply goto the auction house search for the item, get a list of all of them available for sale and buy the cheapest one. The prices are set competing with each other because every player at every auctionhouse in the world sees the same list with same prices. In Ultima Online, you had to find a player's place of business (yeah, they had real houses that existed in the game world, not that instanced garbage new MMOs use) and then prices would vary GREATLY depending on quality of craftsmanship, materials the armor/weapons were made out of, and also availability. For instance if you were lucky enough to own a shop right off a mainhighway right outside of town, you could charge a fortune and sell massive amounts of gear to people and people would pay it just for conveinence. But if you owned a shop out in the woods somewhere, you might only have a few local buyers and you wouldn't get as much for your wares. You'd have to advertise in town and put runes up everywhere for people to teleport there to see what kind of items you had available. Huge variety item mall stores would pop up and become popular.

Travel was another big thing. You didn't just have 100+ mounts hiding in your back pocket. if you wanted a mount, you either had to tame a horse or buy one and if you got killed or dismounted, your horse could be killed and you'd have to get a new one. There was also a lot of travel involved back then, where it took time to get from one place to another, not all this "queue popped -> instant teleport there" crap or meeting stones that just pull you in.

Also character advancement was entirely character skill/stat based and not gearbased. A brand new character could equip the same gear as a player that had played for years, and could even trade gear and such. The whole concept of "soulbound" gear is ridiculous. In UO you could pass down gear you had owned and worn many times to your alts or friends. You could pass a friend your sword to use if you had an extra one and his broke. But at the same time, gear didn't matter that much. There was no "greens, blues, purples" nonsense where each kind outclassed the other. The gear just came in quality ranges that depended on the skill of the craftsman. Magic items were almost nonexistent, they were EXTREMELY rare and hard to get and when you died, someone could just go up to your corpse and take all your belongings, including your magic weapons if you decided to use them.

It was a true playerbased economy where every item in the game you could obtain could be player crafted and the best items in the game were made by master craftsmen. And unlike WOW, where the materials are all level-based like copper for low level crap, then tin, then bronze, then iron, then mithril, etc it wasn't like that. All metals had their own unique properties and still had the same strengths and weaknesses and uses despite your character's wealth or experience playing. A character could focus entirely on trade skills without having to do any combat at all if they desired. You have to fly around hunting for metal deposits to get ore in WOW and tracking them on your minimap to find them... Whereas in UO, you just had to hit an actual mine and start digging anywhere and everywhere until you had as much ore as you could carry, then drag it to the forge to smelt into ingots, then go back into the mine again for more. There were no stupid "rare" materials to craft to create artificial rarity and value like there is in WOW. No frost orbs or chaos orbs that drop off final bosses, no super rare materials that make no sense what-so-ever being involved in the creation of such an item and only placed there to create an artificial economic need for such otherwise pointless items. In UO when you made something, you only needed what it would actually take to craft it. When you made armor, you just needed metal and skill.

I'm not sure this new generation of MMO gamer could deal with it. Everyone is so used to instant gratification and being better than other players just because they have a higher number next to their name, or because the name of your equipment is written in a different color. Having to return to a type of game you risked losing any possessions you carried with you when you went into battle, risking losing your mount you were riding and having to replace it, having to travel and fight your way to places instead of flying over them on auto-fly mode while afk or just being instantly summoned there by meeting stones...

It upsets me, because most players enjoy this excessively easy style of gameplay with a bad crafting system that is based off your level and the level of the content you're doing and where your character can get better just because they get some supposedly epic loot which increases your stats. All new MMOs follow this whole WOW forumla now because it's so successful, and new MMOs based on things that actually take player skill instead of just time investment never seem to make it to the shelves. I think eve online is about as close to UO as any game on the market right now, but despite it's supposed freedoms and open-ended play, eve online is still sadly a time-based game where skills only advance over time with no way to increase it.

Want to buy new, upgraded graphics and engine Ultima Online. An open ended world that has real places, including real player housing, and not just instances everywhere. A world where there are no "quests" to hold your hands and direct you on how to spend your time and you can make that choice yourself. One can only dream.

Remember when you actually had to train a skill so you could see what sort of stats your items had? Arms Lore I think it was called? Old UO promoted serious research and gaming, you were not going to get anywhere in that game without a month or two of SOLID effort.

There still are player run UO communities, free to play. One of the most popular is dedicated to OLD UO, pre-Age of Shadows. Free to play, but you might still need your UO installed to have access to the loader. I still go back to those from time to time. No matter what game I've played, there was never any moment that made me feel so accomplished in gaming as when I was able to buy my own castle.

Oh, and mounts, haha the mounts. You bought a horse, which vendor price was dependent on demand, if it was selling a lot, it was cheaper. If you ran through a pack of mobs, you got knocked off your horse. That horse didn't disappear, it was next to you, it got killed, and if you didn't die, you were in the middle of nowhere, without a horse.

I too played UO for about 4.5 years. It was a great game back in the day... but you have to let bygones be bygones. The school of thought back in 1997 is totally different than it is in 2011. UO was a hard game, and not very player friendly all things considered. WoW can be a difficult game if you choose that path. That's the beauty of WoW... you have so many choices on how to play the game. The classes are also have a nice bit of uniqueness to them. In UO, everyone was a tank running around with 100 resist. If you wanted to be good, you ran as 100/25/100 and that's it (except for the brief period of time when Dex fighters were the "in" thing).

I think UO would have been more like WoW... if the technology would have allowed it to be. WoW is the best at what it does, because it's the best there is. (A loose quote from this month's PC Gamer)

The school of thought for UO was it was basically a virtual world you created alter-egos in to actually live their lives in.

WOW isn't like that, it isn't open-ended it's very "guided". You level through your level-based quests doing chains of them in order, the same order everyone does. You go through your level-based dungeons gradually upgrading and replacing level-based gear. Then when you hit max level you progress through raids in the same order as everyone else. Old content becomes irrelevant and 95% of the WOW world is pointless once you hit 85 except crap to just fly over on your way to the small points of interest that still matter to a level 85 character.

There are no player houses in WOW, and even if they ever DID create them, they would be like all the other new generation MMOs where it's just instanced so everyone runs through the same dumb "door" in town and wind up in their own instanced version of the same house. You might as well claim Scarlet Monastery is your house since it would function the exact same way. I miss having REAL houses that you could actually customize and decorate and that existed in the actual game world. You could pass by them on the street and know who lived there. WOW doesn't even have the means to support anything remotely similar to that, the game world for WOW is so tiny and packed full of trees, mobs, and other rubbish there would be nowhere to even place houses. They also have no items you can place in the game world except a handful of "decorative" cooldown items like the new guild banners. You can't place chairs, tables, cabinets, beds, etc.

And yeah I was a programmer for one of those UO servers years ago, we had a few hundred regular players and I was constantly building and adding to it. Those were really good times and its still fun to dabble in once in a while, and gameplay is FAR more important than graphics any day, but UO has just become so dated now and the client is limited in what it can do program-wise. Some things are impossible to change.

I remember writing code out for trying to get one player to mount another (because we had a player who was a nightmare and wanted his friend to be able to ride him) and I worked on that for days to get it to work to my satisfaction. And even then they aren't technically "mounting" the other person because the game client doesn't allow for that sort of thing and to get it to work I basically had to just create that illusion instead while doing something entirely different. Still, it worked to my satisfaction though and was fun, but i'm just giving examples. Also it would be nice if a game developing company shared some of my ideas and visions instead of everyone wanting to make more WOW-clones for a quick buck.

Also doing things in UO actually mattered. Players and guilds had reputations that meant something. In WOW basically the only reputations you can get are whether you spent 40+ hours a week raiding until you killed all the content in game at the moment so you killed it all before everyone else, or whether you are a ninja looter. And in either case, it doesn't even MATTER to any other player in the game other than just some random factoid you could cite like an unimportant statistic. Now if paragon could wage WAR on other guilds and destroy orgrimmar completely and kill garrosh (for realz, no LOLRESPAWN) then yeah it would matter then. But wow doesn't allow for that kind of thing.

I do agree UO is my top all time game and I wish they would have kept the graphic engine updated. I switched to wow 5 or 6 years ago because of the graphics and the population was dying off. In PvP you actually had something to gain as well! Items if they let their insurance run out and SCROLLS which you sold to buy better equipment, or runic kits, to keep improving yourself. Being able to own a house/castle was a huge + too. It felt like you had your own piece of property and if your neighbors collapsed it meant you could upgrade and build bigger! I have to admit after I went red I went red on alot of characters. Nice thing is everyone can be equal. Everyone starts out with a character and then you customize it to your own liking. You could drop drop fencing 1 day and take up a diff skill the next day. I remember sitting for hours whacking a golem with a 100% poison wep training my characters lol. If they made an updated version of OU and could get enough players to have a decent community I would definitely play it.

I feel somehow happy after reading that there are other people that feels just like me about Ultima Online and WoW. I feel nostalgic everytime I remember the good old times playing UO, one of the best times in my life, and yet still waiting for them to comeback which probably won`t happen.

I often search for news about a new Ultima Online being develop but nothing in the process, we can still go back to UO emulators but is just to outdated for today standars which are the ones that draw players.

I still play WoW you know to get arena done every week, I miss the freedom of UO, being able to attack anyone even my own allies was always more real that WoW.

My conclusion:

All I want is a new UO with a new engine, same world, same rules (no screwy casual stuff, you died = u lose everthing), no artifacs just the classic stuff. PLZ STOP making new expansions for old UO, you are just feeding a lost cause, needs a new begining, FU EA.

All of the games these days aren't nearly as multi dimensional with the depth UO had. I think they're all afraid to aim that big and wide of design since there is a lot of risk involved with companies and many MMO's that have never made it out of that process to even see the light of day. So they aim a lot narrower like WoW is only about raiding or pvp instances, without nearly the multi dimensional aspects or complexity of UO. Its just being safe than sorry i figure. ITs pretty sad that game design has gone backwards in scope tho.

Ultima Online Original Server

I am happy to read this post and I havent posted on a forum in YEARS because i never feel any of the topics are relavent or that its a waste of time. HOWEVER it seems MANY people here want something that I have and im happy to help, UO is one of my favorite games and i've been playing for almost 8 years, since i was around 14 and im 22 now. the server i play on is STRICLY based on the Pre-existing game, you can fight practically anywhere, guilds and factions are in place, you have to buy off of vendors, and there is only 1 server, and 1 WORLD! which means that u cant escape to trammel, its ONLY fellucia. and im going to tell you ALL how to get this, follow these instructions TO THE LETTER. and youw ill be playing ultima online within a day, just like the old times. i hope this helps everyone and if you have any questions then add me to yahoo messenger or email me. No spam please.

yahoo: [email protected]
email: [email protected]
-------------------------------------------
***************************
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go to this website and download "Ultima Online Mondain's Legacy"http://download.cnet.com/Ultima-Onli...-10432237.html
---After Downloading install the game
---Let it patch to version 7.0.9.0 (stop it after patch 7.0.9.0 "applies""
---DO NOT let it patch 7.0.10.0 or you will have to redo EVERYTHING
-------------------------------------------
***************************
-------------------------------------------
go to this website and download "Razor Latest Version"http://www.runuo.com/razor/download.php
---After Ultima is downloaded and patched start Razor
---Make sure the server selected is "Hybrid"
---Make sure the client is 2D version(3D is no longer avaliable with "Kingdom Reborn")
---Enter a Log in ID and Password AND REMEMBER THEM, when you hit "ENTER" it will save this information to the server
---You can now log in, choose the 1 and ONLY server and create a character, explore and have fun!

About the mounts, not everyone has hours to walk places, or jump through hoops to get a mount, to travel somewhere, then do the objective.

I like Diablo 2 for that, even more so than WoW. Now I know it's not a MMORPG, the game is capped at only a few players. But you can hop in for a few minutes and achieve something. Unlike vanilla wow, where I can fondly remember flying flight paths for a solid 1/2 hour to move around.

This really makes me regret not getting into MMO's sooner. I missed out on UO and started on Dark Ages of Camelot (which I did love). The same feelings apply to me too, I miss the massive amount of customisation you could do, the different classes for each of the 3 factions, the PVP when it wasn't laggy was great too. I also loved that sense of exploration when you started to go to the remote areas or to Atlantis.

It's a pity but it's like someone said, WoW is much more accessible and therefore that's probably the way it's going to go from now on.

About the mounts, not everyone has hours to walk places, or jump through hoops to get a mount, to travel somewhere, then do the objective.

Depending on your magic skills, you could teleport or make a gate for others to also travel through. Also, instead of a hearthstone you had runes, but you could set them to literally almost anywhere you wanted and you could have as many of them as you wanted as well. So honestly, getting around wasn't all that hard in UO either, for the most part.

So yeah if you had no magic or mount, then it could be tough on getting around, especially if you had no friends. Even my "mule" (character that was strictly for gathering and/or crafting skills) had a low level of magic so that he could teleport around, kill random mobs if I got attacked, and also heal/cure himself.

I am happy to read this post and I havent posted on a forum in YEARS because i never feel any of the topics are relavent or that its a waste of time. HOWEVER it seems MANY people here want something that I have and im happy to help, UO is one of my favorite games and i've been playing for almost 8 years, since i was around 14 and im 22 now. the server i play on is STRICLY based on the Pre-existing game, you can fight practically anywhere, guilds and factions are in place, you have to buy off of vendors, and there is only 1 server, and 1 WORLD! which means that u cant escape to trammel, its ONLY fellucia. and im going to tell you ALL how to get this, follow these instructions TO THE LETTER. and youw ill be playing ultima online within a day, just like the old times. i hope this helps everyone and if you have any questions then add me to yahoo messenger or email me. No spam please.

yahoo: [email protected]
email: [email protected]
-------------------------------------------
***************************
-------------------------------------------
go to this website and download "Ultima Online Mondain's Legacy"http://download.cnet.com/Ultima-Onli...-10432237.html
---After Downloading install the game
---Let it patch to version 7.0.9.0 (stop it after patch 7.0.9.0 "applies""
---DO NOT let it patch 7.0.10.0 or you will have to redo EVERYTHING
-------------------------------------------
***************************
-------------------------------------------
go to this website and download "Razor Latest Version"http://www.runuo.com/razor/download.php
---After Ultima is downloaded and patched start Razor
---Make sure the server selected is "Hybrid"
---Make sure the client is 2D version(3D is no longer avaliable with "Kingdom Reborn")
---Enter a Log in ID and Password AND REMEMBER THEM, when you hit "ENTER" it will save this information to the server
---You can now log in, choose the 1 and ONLY server and create a character, explore and have fun!

I saw a post exactly like this one in another forum where people were giving the OP crap about rather or not posting about private UO servers was illegal like posting about WoW servers, but I can't find that post now. Assuming it got deleted/moved, so I'll just address it here. (I saw the post at work where I can't post, or I'd have just done it then.)

If you are curious, there is absolutely nothing illegal about running UO private servers. Origin/OSI/EA/whatever the hell they are now actually allowed people to download the emulator software directly from their website. You don't have to pay them, you don't have to offer any kind of lip-service that I'm aware of. These private servers are not cash-cows for the people who run them. It is possible to have paid accounts on some of them (there was a VERY popular one several years back called "Defiance" that allowed players to pay monthly fees for extra perks) but the reasoning behind the subscription isn't profit. It simply allows the people running them to... well, keep running them. Paying for the massive rig and outlandish bandwidth required to have hundreds of people playing on a private server at once can be expensive, for a private individual.

If you have an interest in this fantastic old game (and yes, it did things that modern MMOs can't even conceive of implementing. Don't let its outdated graphics fool you. This game was the real deal before Age of Shadows, and many of the free servers still exist in that time frame) there is a program that the free servers are all listed in. You should be able to google it, although I am having a hard time remembering the name. It required .net framework, and most of the servers required you to log in through Razer (which you can also google).

Go give it a try. 15 minutes of research should be enough to turn up a server that still has a large enough population to make your time worthwhile. Just don't expect a free ride.

Fun side-note: The person in charge of the expansion that utterly decimated Ultima Online (Age of Shadows. It basically turned UO from a skill-based game full of earth tones, into a gear-based RNG grind-fest full of neon colored weapons and "epic gear) was a gentleman who went by the name of "Evocare" at the time. You might know him as Tom Chilton, World of Warcraft's very own Kalgan. I've never figured out why driving a spear into the side of the greatest online game ever made should qualify you to head up World of Warcraft's PvP development, but... what do I know?

Yeah We ALl do m8 guess again somting went frong well lets hope it will be fixed soon

I loved Ultima Online. LOVED it. We actually did have an auction house, it was called UO-Auctions I think (it has been so long) and you bid and when the auction completed and items were traded, you'd go back and give feedback. Hours spent designing and decorating your house (and locating), every new character had a runebook with hot spots, cities, and dungeons another with the best house vendors, maxed out mule characters. I miss it and I agree with the OP, I compare everything back to UO. I don't compare Aion or Rift to WoW at first, I compare them to UO.

Hours farming ants so I can have bags of sending for all the hides and scales and gold I'd accumulate farming for the perfect White Wyrm. That perfect pack of hellhounds or Ossies.

Great Lakes Shard: Guardians of Valhalla and Yew Archers in the house. Later, UO-Demise.

By wow standards, I was UO wrath baby, as I came in with Age of Shadows, but I did so much in that game that I did feel I experienced so much and had so much fun doing it.

I loved Ultima Online. LOVED it. We actually did have an auction house, it was called UO-Auctions I think (it has been so long) and you bid and when the auction completed and items were traded, you'd go back and give feedback. Hours spent designing and decorating your house (and locating), every new character had a runebook with hot spots, cities, and dungeons another with the best house vendors, maxed out mule characters. I miss it and I agree with the OP, I compare everything back to UO. I don't compare Aion or Rift to WoW at first, I compare them to UO.

Hours farming ants so I can have bags of sending for all the hides and scales and gold I'd accumulate farming for the perfect White Wyrm. That perfect pack of hellhounds or Ossies.

Great Lakes Shard: Guardians of Valhalla and Yew Archers in the house. Later, UO-Demise.

By wow standards, I was UO wrath baby, as I came in with Age of Shadows, but I did so much in that game that I did feel I experienced so much and had so much fun doing it.

uo.tradespot.net was the UO auction site, as I recall.

I actually quit at around AoS, myself. I got in right after T2A released, and played through till right before AoS (someone broke into my house and stole my PC, I shit you not.) I came back for awhile during AoS, but... oh God, it just wasn't the same.

I played on the Lake Superior server. I was part of the Skara Brae Rangers right at the beginning of their decline, which was a sad thing to watch. If you don't know who the Skara Brae Rangers were, you should google them. They weren't just "eCelebrities." They were quite a phenomenon for awhile. You might also google "The Lootless Army." Not sure if that would turn them up or not. Basically, they were a group of people who got tired of being PK'd, and they started recruiting and banding together to fight back. Their whole gimmick was running around with some bandages, a crappy weapon, and a couple magic reagents, and stomping player killers into the ground through sheer numbers. If you died, you lost nothing. If you killed them, they lost a ton. The guild became hundreds of players strong. Two or three PKs getting overrun by an army of thirty noobs in trash gear on foot was just... something to behold.

It was a pretty interesting backlash to the weird social experiment that was early Ultima Online, and... lame as it sounds, I'm vaguely proud to have been a part of it.

There just never will be another UO. Too much drive to match WoW's success for any MMO company to take a gamble on a hard-core sandbox like UO was. The necessity to aim for the mass market appeal of WoW's soccer mom/hockey dad player base prevents real innovation.

Yeah We ALl do m8 guess again somting went frong well lets hope it will be fixed soon

Aw, man, the nostalgia. I played that game when I was 10 years old. I didn't know what I was really doing, but I had loads of fun. I just ran around doing random stupid shit. I explored, died a lot, lost my stuff so many times. But I didn't care. I think at one point I actually was able to afford a house, and it was a fantastic feeling trying to find a spot of land to put the house on, without too many big creatures outside waiting to kill me because my character wasn't particularly strong. Or the one time I bought a boat, and attempted to sail the seas only to die to a water elemental, losing my stuff, and losing my boat. Man.. Sometimes I wish I knew what I was doing, at other times, I don't. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.

I will never understand why games removed the ability to loot other players when you kill them. That was the best part about PKing in UO especailly when you got someone's house key and cleaned them out. Other than maybe EvE there isnt a single MMO out right now where PvP has any consequence. PvP in games today is nothing more than zergfests because you know you have nothing to lose. And to people who are saying "WTF. Why would I want all my gear stolen that sounds fun". QQ more and get better.

I will never understand why games removed the ability to loot other players when you kill them. That was the best part about PKing in UO especailly when you got someone's house key and cleaned them out. Other than maybe EvE there isnt a single MMO out right now where PvP has any consequence. PvP in games today is nothing more than zergfests because you know you have nothing to lose. And to people who are saying "WTF. Why would I want all my gear stolen that sounds fun". QQ more and get better.

Pretty much this. The whiners in WoW get the game tailored to them. The whiners in UO quit. Look at twinks in WoW, for instance. A group of people decided to stay at a certain level and max out their characters. Everyone who was too lazy or too uninterested to do the same whined forever to Blizzard, and the next thing you know Blizzard is taking steps to eradicate the twink population while maintaining that they support people's ability to twink to the public.

In UO, whiners either got better, made tough friends, or quit. You had no choice. There was no whining to the developers until things got changed, at least not for a very long time. If someone killed you, dry-looted you, made fun of your ghost, and then resurrected you so they could kill you again... tough luck. Get better, or ICQ (heh, remember ICQ?) some friends to come kill the guy.

Nowadays, there is almost no incentive to get better. People just whine until things get changed, and if they can't get things changed, they stop PvPing. Neither was an option in old UO. PvP was everywhere, and the devs didn't care.

Ahhh, the sink-or-swim good ole days...

Yeah We ALl do m8 guess again somting went frong well lets hope it will be fixed soon

UO Tradespot was OLD OLD school trading site, i think it eventually died and something else took over after that which was less active. I used to love it because you could make game interactions when you weren't in the game and just meet up afterward. i'd always do really big transactions or rares through that site. It would move so fast when it was in its prime too. It complemented the vendor system which IMO was the most enjoyable selling system i've ever played around with in a MMORPG, but its similar to housing, since nobody did both better than UO, even if it did clutter/lag up the areas. By the time i quit i had some prime vendor house spots on Britannia road that would make a killing, and i remember always being constantly surprised just how many people visited and bought from my vendors day to day. What i love about UO is there were high end activities when you got rich that was exclusive like playing the real estate market buying/selling property and there were some scenic, prime real estate properties too. I remember owning one of the best mining house locations i purchased when someone was quitting and it was all isolated surrounded by ore mountain area in the small isolated patch of grass. I owned so much by the time i quit i felt like i had a empire. I got $850 for it at the time but i'm sure i could've made a lot more if i cared about min maxing it, i just wanted to move on and sell it as a bundle. Its just really REALLY cool to have virtual real estate property that has value, sometimes a lot, that you own. Which you can decorate, PK around, etc.

WoW is like the opposite. WoW's fighting/play mechanics are better but thats really the only thing thats better. WoW is so narrow minded in its scope where all you really can do is pve or pvp when you login to the game, and with very redundant venues at that. WoW could be a lot better since it does sport more fluid gameplay and especially less lag than UO had, but Blizzard seems stubborn to a fault keeping it stupid simple.

I miss old school taming.. running around with 50 Ostards decimating everything that moved. My real issue with the game, and probably why it doesn't work today- was the looting system. Granted back then the difference between the best gear in the game and what you can buy off of a vendor WASNT that large. Primarily skills are what made you what you were.

However Imagine spending months upon months raiding, Finally getting Sulfuras, Walking outside of Org/Stormwind and losing it instantly. It'd feel quiet unfair. /shrugs. Some thigns were done amazingly. Some were done awfully. All around though I really enjoyed UO. I hope they bring around another game similar to it.